Mr. Chairman, honorable senators, ladies and gentlemen.

I am a scientist who has worked with radioactive materials all my professional life, approximately 55 years. I have written widely on the effects of radiation on people, on risks and hazards to life and on environmental affairs generally.

I append to this testimony some details about myself and my work.

I want to explain to you that the incinerator component of the Advanced Waste Treatment Facility is an important project, and that the effect on Yellowstone Park and the Grand Tetons will not be measurable. This can be shown in very simple ways.

Firstly, it is important to understand the purpose of the incinerator. In the nuclear arms race of 1960-1990 the U.S. built a lot (30,000) of nuclear weapons and left the handling of the waste products until a later time. There is a strong multipartisan feeling that now is a good time to dispose of the waste products in a final way. The part of the waste that will be burned in the incinerator, will NOT be concentrated high-level radioactive waste but high-bulk radioactive products. It would be costly and environmentally inferior to dispose of these high-bulk products in other ways. Proper disposal should be independent of whether any use is ever made of nuclear technology in the future. I therefore call upon all true environmentalists and true peace lovers to support the proposed incinerator.

Secondly, I note that there are not large quantities of radioactive material in the waste to be incinerated. A simple calculation shows that even if there were extraordinarily careless burning, no one (not even an operator of the facility) would get a prompt dose of radiation large enough to produce an "acute" effect so that a calculation of the dose ACCUMULATED (or averaged) over a long period adequately characterizes any small hazard to the surrounding population.

Thirdly, I note that it is possible, and now usual, to design an incinerator that traps most particulates. Monitoring can ensure that the incinerator would be switched off in a short period of time if the trap failed so that the cumulative dose would not appreciably increase.

Fourthly, locating the incinerator at Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory is very appropriate. The wise decision was made 50 years ago to locate test facilities away from population centers and the laboratory was built in Idaho for that reason.

Fifthly, it is reliably expected that the dose at the boundary of the facility, 1/4 mile from the incinerator, will be much less than the allowable occupational dose. At the nearest large population center of Idaho Falls, 40 miles away, the dose (averaged over time) would be reduced by the distance, not quite by a factor of 1/r², because vertical dispersion is limited, but by about 1/r^1.5. This is a reduction in dose of more than a factor of 2000. The dose would not be measurable directly at Idaho Falls. At Jackson, Wyoming the dose would be at least 5 times lower than at Idaho Falls.

Sixthly, I am aware that there has been opposition to this incinerator in the state of Wyoming. In the rest of this testimony I will comment directly upon some arguments of opponents of the incinerator.

In September 1999, in Jackson, Wyoming, a meeting of the American Nuclear Society was picketed. Although few, if any, of the meeting participants had anything to do with either the problem of military wastes or its solution, most are knowledgeable about radiation. A`picket explained to me that "we should use solar energy" but she failed to describe how solar energy gets rid of material already generated for a different purpose⁽¹⁾

 This illustrates the extraordinary misinformation and misunderstandings that have occurred.

Some of the Jackson protestors comment "Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free". I note that this is impossible if the words are taken literally because all the billions of billions of atoms in Wyoming have atomic nuclei. If it means keep Yellowstone free of nuclear bombs I note that the incinerator will get rid of the effects of past bomb making and not make bombs in any way. If it means that the protestors want to keep Yellowstone free of material that emits radiation, again they cannot do so. I have in front of me the U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin number 395 "Radioactivity of the Thermal Waters of Yellowstone National Park" dated in 1909. Table 8 of this report shows that the hot springs for which Yellowstone is famous are more radioactive than most hot springs in Europe and they are still. Only Bad Gastein, a favorite health spa using what was (in 1909 and is still) regarded as healthful radioactivity, competes. The cry to "Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free" cannot be satisfied. Even capping these springs - including the very radioactive Lower Geyser basin would only begin to address the issue. The accumulated radioactivity of these springs exceeds by over a million times the accumulated activity in the area that might come from the proposed incinerator.

Other protestors argue that "one atom of plutonium can kill you" and that incinerating any material containing plutonium is harmful. This argument is nonsense. I point out to them and to you that studies of plutonium in people show that each and every one of us has well over a billion atoms of plutonium inside us- and about one atom decays every second. Yet there are no widespread deaths from plutonium ingestion or inhalation. The ONLY deaths attributable to plutonium ingestion or inhalation are the workers who were exposed to extraordinary high levels of plutonium (30,000 times as much as the rest of us) at the first Russian plutonium facility in 1950 and who developed lung cancer at the same rate as heavy cigarette smokers.

Of course more precise estimates have been made in the Environmental Impact Statement. But the very general reasons above should convince you that the incinerator can, and will be a very safe facility. The good that this incinerator can do by cleaning up the waste from the arms race (as some would have it, cleaning up our consciences) outweighs a billionfold the truly minuscule adverse impacts on its surroundings.

I remind the Chairman and others who live in Wyoming that they are not environmentally pure. In Wyoming there are several coal-fired power plants, that in spite of some pollution control, still send large amounts of fine particles, and gaseous precursors of fine particles, with the prevailing wind to my state of Massachussets. The effect of this on health has been estimated by myself and colleagues at Harvard School of Public Health to be considerable. (See for example "Particles in Our Air" edited by myself and J. D. Spengler, Harvard University Press). It is also well known that coal deposits contain uranium and other radioactive materials. Both the power stations and the open pit coal mines in Wyoming bring this to the surface and markedly increase the release of radioactive materials (including radon gas) into the environment. The sewage system of Jackson also leaves a lot to be desired. The well financed efforts of the Jackson protestors could well be directed to cleaning up their own back yard.

The above facts should convince you that the opposition to the incinerator is wasting your time. How did we get to this position, and how can we avoid it in the future? The first failing is in my own profession. In spite of efforts by myself and others in the Harvard physics department, we have failed to educate even intelligent people about radiation and its effects so that the protesters think, erroneously, that there is a real issue. Secondly, The protesters in the American system deserve a response to this issue. Initially the response should be from those responsible for disposal of the wastes - the DOE. If the bomb making had gone to the defense department (DOD) at the time of the breakup of the AEC, some of the confusion would have been avoided.

Alas, asking questions of the present DOE rarely elicits answers - unlike asking the old AEC. Many of the ANS members know this and should have stepped into the breach. If I had been in charge of the picketed ANS meeting I would have immediately organized a special session, inviting all the protesters and allies to explain their concerns so that the assembled international experts could address and allay the concerns. I did talk to the pickets - for a total of 2 hours and made an open offer to discuss the issues in detail with the influential backers. I wrote to the local newspaper and I have come here.

I regret that the opponents did not themselves ask that the issue be openly discussed by experts at an early stage before rushing to legal and political intervention⁽²⁾. Now we have a legal intervention and appeals to you in Congress. When the legal case comes up, I intend to assemble a group of expert independent scientists to submit a brief of amicus curiae to the court - and hope that the court will appropriately respond by a dismissal under summary judgement. I hope that you will also dismiss the protests by these uninformed people - even though some of them are influential.

Once an issue has reached the political arena it is often possible to sidestep the issue and find a technical alternative. But the alternative has to be both technically and politically real. As noted above, Wyoming pulls more radioactive material out of the ground with its coal mining than any other state. If and when Wyoming agrees to put radioactive material back into the ground, then there would exist a technical alternative. The influential Wyoming residents, Mr Gerry Spence, Mr Harrison Ford, and Mr James Wolfensohn might well consider this alternative.

FOOTNOTES

1. A mirror could be used to focus the sun's rays on the mixed waste. The heat would then incinerate the waste effectively. But it would still be an incinerator. But I believe that the protester was confused and thinking, erroneously, that the proposed incinerator would be a nuclear power plant.

2. I do not consider consulting Professor John Gofman of Berkeley or Professor Mahkijani of New York adequate consultation. Their views are extreme and have been completely discredited.